PRESENT TENDENCY OF ALTRUISM 387 



tions, in tlie interests of the race which is to come after us, every 

 resource of applied science is devoted to prolonging the life of 

 weak and biologically useless persons, thus permitting their 

 reproduction ; the result we have seen in the decrease of the rate 

 of juvenile mortaUty at the expense of that of the mortality of 

 persons of forty-five and upwards — that is to say, the result 

 of this mistaken altruism is to permit of a greater number of 

 persons attaining the age of marriage who, under natural con- 

 ditions, would be eliminated by reason of their inherent con- 

 stitutional weakness before reaching maturity. Under existing 

 conditions these are allowed to artificially prolong their life, and 

 to beget fresh generations of weaklings. The supposed tendency 

 of altruistic culture — ^that tendency which, in the eyes of Mr. 

 Kidd, constitutes its special value, namely, the subordination 

 of the interests of the individual to the interests of the race — ^is 

 certainly, in this concrete case, very hard to discover. Rather 

 does it seem that altruism, ia the limited sphere assigned to it, 

 tends to preserve the useless individual at the expense of the 

 race ; and to mitigate a relatively small amount of actual sufier- 

 ing at the expense of much greater suijering in the future. If 

 Mr. Kidd were to glance at the tables of relative mortality at 

 different ages, as given in the reports of the Registrar-General, 

 could he maintain that the tendency of our ethical culture is to 

 subordinate the interests of the individual to the interests of 

 the race in the future ? ^ 



But are the ethical influences which Mr. Kidd sees at the basis 

 of our Western civihsation in reality so potent as he supposes 

 them to be ? Do they really constitute the force which is moving 

 the civilised world ? In a remarkable chapter on " Modern 



1 " In the process of evolution through which we have passed, the main 

 function of that ethical movement on which our civilisation is founded 

 has been, in the first place, to provide the sanctions necessary to secure the 

 continued subordination of the interests of the self-assertive individual 

 to the larger interests of society " [vidi Mr. Benjamin Kidd, Social 

 Evolvtion, p. 240). 



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